Being There

GH observes that ABC doesn't understand it

In a fortnight’s time, Australia and Sri Lanka commence a two-Test series in Sri Lanka. It is the shortest possible tour, spanning barely two weeks, with minimal interruption, and both matches at the same venue - the picturesque ground at Galle. Yet it will have a rarity value - Australia, as its advocacy of tiered Test cricket confirms, can’t really be arsed with the world beyond the other two of the big three. And if it is as absorbing as Australia’s last visit to Sri Lanka two years ago, it could generate some excellent cricket, as well as complementing the Women’s Ashes at the MCG.

Your Australian Broadcasting Corporation, however, will not be represented. Instead, the three callers and three experts will be trooping into Sydney’s ABC studios to commentate from television pictures. Who knows? Perhaps they will have to do their own sound effects, as ninety years ago, when the ‘Synthetic Tests’ were reconstituted from telegrams composed during the Ashes in England? Jim Maxwell might grow all misty at rapping a pencil on a gavel to simulate the sound of the bat striking the ball a la McGilvray; Stuart Clark can learn a new skill dropping the needle on the gramaphone recording of a Sri Lankan crowd; perhaps someone will turn up the humidity in their soundproof booth as a surrogate atmosphere. The rest of us? Me, I’ll be thinking WTAF?